AT - Rojar V Detailed Survey

Posted on 10 Jun 2013 @ 10:09pm by Lieutenant Theron Rhodes
Edited on on 10 Jun 2013 @ 11:48pm

2,979 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: Rojar V - Surface
Timeline: MD 08 1030

ON:

In the auxiliary room adjacent to Transporter Room 2, Lt. Rhodes reviewed the EVA Suit procedures with a Tech before the others arrived to suit up. "Now I understand this is a very cold rock we are beaming down to. What is the extreme temperature that this suit can maintain function?"

Tech Agreyas replied, "It can with stand minus 250 degrees celcius for 8 hours."

Rhodes continued to check the seals and connections, "Good, because we will be down there for 6 hours."

"Well," Agreyas began and paused. "That is as long as it does not get damaged," Agreyas added looking up at Rhodes out of the corner of his eye. He then added, "These suits were not built for combat or mountain climbing."

"What about the new combat suit?" Rhodes asked.

Agreyas stood up and turned to Rhodes, "Oh no, that thing would not stand the temp for more than 30 minutes probably."

Rhodes was going to continue on with the questions when the door opened and other members of the team entered.

Liyar entered the room and silently headed for the wall, pulling down the shelf and grabbing one of the vacuum sealed EVA suits from the rack inside. He set it on the ground and tugged out the larger, bulkier material, beginning to assemble the frame quickly and efficiently. After he methodically attached each part to his body, first his boots, then the leg frames, followed by the bulky torso which went up over the head. The arms were fitted next and then he stopped to check the suit's system functionality, going through the small embedded LCARS system on his arm. He placed his gloves on and then stuck his helmet over his head. All of it connected together with a snap, providing an airtight seal through the entire suit that was seamless. Pressurization was normal, oxygen, heat, magnetic sensors and movement sensors were all functional. Liyar set the internal thermometer to his suit at Vulcan standard and then walked across the auxiliary room to the door of the transporter room.

Theron put on his EVA suit as Lt. Liyar did so. He seemed to be falling behind, though it was not a race. He kept watching Liyar at how systematically he was in all detail. Quite amazing. Theron thought. It was something he had not ever noticed before for some reason.

Maenad arrived just as Liyar was heading to the transporter room, all suited up. She caught his eyes and signaled for him to wait for her by raising her eyebrows and raising a finger. "Mister Rhodes," she said to the new security chief. It took her a few minutes to suit up before she made her way over to Liyar's side, and she flashed him a smile.

Rhodes nodded an acknowledgement to Lt. Panne and finished getting into his EVA suit. He headed into the Transporter Room leaving the other two. He was not sure, but they seemed to want to talk.

Liyar stilled near the door, lifting his eyes to Maenad's. He folded his hands behind his back and bowed his head toward her. "Good morning," he greeted her once she finished.

"Good morning," Maenad said back to him. But her eyes narrowed, wondering why Rhodes hadn't acknowledged her presence other than by giving her, what she thought was, a curt nod of his head. After suiting up without so much as a word, he walked right past her and Liyar like they were invisible. She looked at Liyar with a curious frown, but said nothing about it. Liyar knew her well enough by now to know what she was thinking. With her helmet held beneath her right arm, she shrugged. "This should be interesting," she told him after Rhodes had left them standing alone in the storage room. With her free hand, she gestured for Liyar to lead the way into the adjacent transporter room.

Lt. Rhodes smiled at the two as they entered the transporter room, then bent to the side to look around them. He did not see Quinn. Looking back at Panne and Liyar he asked, "Have you heard from the Master Chief? He's rarely late."

Liyar closed his eyes and looked up. "Chief Quinn has bowed out of participation in this expedition for the moment," he said when his eyes opened again. "He has informed Captain Saalm that he must make preparations for-" Liyar's head twitched toward the wall, "-an undetermined event. Captain Saalm has left his position open, in case we require additional assistance. The information should be located on your PADD."

Liyar replied before Maenad had the chance; she had no idea that Quinn was supposed to be with them, but she was thankful that Liyar did. She pressed her lips together and sucked the insides of her cheeks between her teeth. Her left hand hung from the strap of her backpack, hooked by her thumb. The right was on her hip with her helmet tucked between her elbow; she just wanted to beam down and get this over with.

Rhodes looked down with a serious look, "I must have missed that somewhere in the many reports on my desk." Looking up at each of the faces. "In that case the Chief can join us later. Is there anything else I may have missed, that I may need to know?"

The Vulcan ran through a phaser and tricorder check as well as a general systems check before he walked up the two steps to the transporter and stepped onto the pod. "I believe your general mission is to identify mineral deposits and survey geologic structures. If there is a further objective I am unaware of it. The specifics of that mission are yours to determine. I am merely here as a consultant," Liyar answered him and looked between both him and Maenad.

Rhodes looked at Panne, "I am not sure if I will ever get over the Vulcan way of thinking." Smiling and shaking his head slightly.

Maenad grinned awkwardly, not quite sure what Rhodes meant. She glanced at Liyar who looked, well, like he usually did and, to break the sudden discomfort she thought clung to the air, she said "Shall we beam down?"

Rhodes gave a quick nod and walked up onto a transporter pad.

Once they were all situated on the glass pods beneath their feet, a flurry of blue-white lights encapsulated them and they were whisked away to the rocky, barren surface of Rojar V. They all rematerialized at the same time, but Liyar was the first to move, using his feet on the ground to maneuver himself so that he could take in the awesome crevasses and boulders all around them. Dust unsettled for millennia kicked up around their feet, floating weightlessly in the air, while hundreds of rocky columns struck up from the surface all over the planet as far as they eye could see, creating twisted, morbid sculptures which naturally eroded away over time. Some looked delicate and malformed while others shot through the sky like mountains. Others looked frozen, as if a fountain of water had been turned into stone. The planet itself was a sandy brown, their suits contrasting brightly against their environment, and the inky space above them completing the picture in an almost cartoonish way.

Rhodes watched as Liyar did some kind of pirouette. He lifted his wrist and activated the LCARS, activating the sensors doing a quick sweep of the area. He really did not expect anything, but procedures are to be followed. He said, "Well, I can confirm that we are the only people here within the curvature of the planet."

Liyar blinked under the bright helmet lights in his suit and eyed Theron questioningly. "What is a pirouette?" he asked, pulling the word out of the muddled fog of thoughts all around him. He didn't seem very concerned with an answer, it was more under his breath, and he turned his attention to his tricorder shortly afterward.

Rhodes felt a little embarrassed, turning to Liyar, "My apologies Lieutenant. I must have been thinking too loudly." He snickered then answered, "A pirouette is a dance movement where one turns in a complete circle gracefully. I guess the observation turn you made brought that term to my mind."

"I see," Liyar said, although he wasn't quite sure that he did. Was it an insult, or a compliment? He shrugged in his suit and regarded his tricorder. As Theron had pointed out, there were no threats, creatures, or life forms to be concerned about, but, he aimed the tricorder over the vast structures around them. The biggest danger wasn't a hostile force, it was the environment around them, with such great structures, collapse and peril were still imminent. Fortunately the tricorder did not reveal any instability. Nevertheless, "I recommend we exercise caution while exploring this planet. These structures may have points of instability we cannot yet recognize."

Theron reset his built in tri-corder for structure and density.

"Very good, Mister Rhodes," Maenad complimented him on his awareness of the higher elements of culture, a world she never thought he would have touched. "The ballet, an artistic expression of dance and music, originating in France of course, is one of the most beautiful art forms ever known." She walked out in front of them to where there wasn't a lot of a rocky debris, where it was relatively flat. She scanned the ground with her eyes to make sure she knew where to step so as not to sprain her ankle or something, and she removed her backpack. "Watch." Maenad imagined the ballet scene from Strauss' Die Fledermauss. In the real ballet, a male dancer would have to carry her when she did her 'slow motion' skips, but in the low gravity she would be able to do it all by herself. She ran in a semi-circle through the cleared area of rocks, hands out by her sides like a gliding bird. She stopped suddenly, raised them gracefully, and began to skip towards them. When she reached Rhodes and Liyar, she stopped, held out her arms at either side, wrists dangling, and raised her right leg parallel with the ground. She bent her knee, foot almost flat against the inside of her thigh and she did a single twirl, the pirouette, and then slapped her heels together and made a bow. She raised, smiling. "La pirouette."

The Vulcan watched Maenad curiously as she began skipping about. He recalled she'd once spoken of her background in ballet, but he suspected that in the bulky spacesuit in the low gravity world of Rojar V, the effect was quite lost. But he could feel her amusement and cheer, and rested his hand over his wrist in the Vulcan gesture for showing appreciation, and lowered his hand downward and out. "Interesting," he said stoically, but his eyes were lighter.

Theron took his free gloved hand can clapped it to the back of the other hand, "Bravo, Bravo." He called out. He actually had attended several ballet preformances while at the academy. Of course, only to empress a girl, but the background apparently did pay off. "Excellently preformed Maenad." he congratulated informally.

Maenad mimicked a curtsy and smiled through her visor at the two of them. It was probably the most excitement this giant rock had ever, or would ever, see. She whipped out her tricorder for another look. There was nothing interesting reading, so she replaced it at her side. The terrain was relatively the same in all directions, with a slight rise of rocks and boulders about fifty metres away. There were craters everywhere, but most were tiny and no bigger than hot tubs. "Shall we go take a look at those rocks?" she asked, nodding toward the miniature mountains made of large jutting boulders.

Rhodes turned his helmet toward Panne, "They appear to be the only significant thing around, so yes."

Maenad clenched her jaw, easily irritated as she was, not appreciating the sarcasm. It took a few minutes to make it to the base of the rocks, which were at least ten meters tall, dwarfing all of them by several times. "Wow," Maenad breathed. "Mostly anorthosite," she read dryly from her tricorder. "Feldspar, plagioclase; this is billions of years old." She glanced first at Rhodes, then to Liyar. "I estimate at least three point five, maybe up to four billion." Maenad extended a hand and pressed her palm flat against it. In a sense, it was amazing. In others, it was quite boring.

And Liyar was bored. At least, of taking readings. He found he didn't quite have the patience to stick a tricorder at everything and jot it down. Instead, he knelt down next to the base of a high towering boulder, studying the natural patterns in the rock. They were interesting, natural patterns he knew, but it could've almost been someone's chicken scratch. It was too haphazard to be intentional, but it cracked all along the base edges and wound up and around the rocks, splitting up near the top and dropping down toward the sides.

Rhodes turned his scanner towards the rock face again. "That is odd."

"To which do you refer?" Liyar asked, studying the markings closely.

"Well . . ," The security officer said slowly, "I pick up the same readings of the composition as you, but can only read about a meter past the surface. I get no readings after that. I do not get a reading of a void either. It is as if the material in this formula works as a natural sensor shield." He turned to Maenad. "Probably something your scientist can look into further?"

"I think it's just a dense rock," Maenad shrugged. Transporters had a hard time beaming through rocks as well, especially ones with high concentrations of varying minerals like this one. Rhodes was only trying to help, she thought, and gave him a smile. She reached to her belt and removed a chisel. Unconsciously, she put her hand on Liyar's shoulder to leverage herself down into a kneeling position, and she softly smiled at him. She then used the chisel to edge off some flakes of the massive boulder and placed them in a plastic sample bag, which she then tucked into her backpack. "I will have Mister Petrov take a look at it," she said to the security officer.

Liyar met Maenad's eyes with his own, softened a bit, but otherwise he appeared completely engrossed by the rocks in front of him. Look at these, his body language said to Maenad as he indicated the strange markings, blinking curiously toward them.

Theron turned and replied, "Sounds like a good idea."

Maenad used Liyar to stand up again, then put her hands behind her back, looking up that miniature mountain of rocks. "Who wants to lead the way to the top?" she asked. It didn't need climbing gear as there was enough of a slope to ascend just by climbing with hands and feet. There were natural pathways, too, that would make the venture up a lot easier.

Seeing no one had volunteered, Liyar stepped forward and fitted his foot against the beginning of the slope. It was sturdy, but he still wanted to be careful. "Everyone watch your step," he said as he ascended, getting a few ways up from them and looking back down. "It is clear."

"Understood." The security officer replied and waited for the good doctor to go next. He would take up the rear.

Maenad hilted her tricorder and followed Liyar up the natural pathways to the height of the rocks. It took only a few minutes of climbing before they got as high as they could. From the top, though, the view was more vast, but just as unexciting as from below. This moon was desolate, and the same everywhere they looked. Maenad put her hands on her hips. "I am... thoroughly unimpressed," she said while shaking her head.

Rhodes looked out across the expanse of the moon's surface in all directions from the height they had achieved. "I concur. Not much out there." Right about then a small part of the rock wall, next to Rhodes, exploded. A small amount of particles burst and fell to the ground. Theron thought that odd and turned toward the rock wall.

There were a few small pelts more, and Maenad realised that there was a meteor shower. "We need to get out of here," she said. Maenad looked at Liyar and nodded, then communicated with the Galileo to have them beamed out of harm's way. Within a few seconds, they were a few hundred kilometres west of their previous coordinates.

The terrain there was largely the same - a lot like Earth's moon, she thought. The team wandered around aimlessly for about an hour until one of their tricorders found a dilithium deposit a few hundred metres below the surface. Maenad sighed to herself, thinking that another natural environment would be ruined because of the findings of a team that she had to lead.

Rhodes followed the others. He was getting tired of seeing the same thing. There was no change on his scanners. "Doctor? Are we about done here?"

"Let's move to the next location," she nodded to Rhodes as she sent him the next set of coordinates to walk to. A few more hours of wandering this place, she thought with exasperation.


OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Liyar
Diplomatic Officer, VDF/SDD
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Theron Rhodes
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

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